BBC boss attacks multi-channel TV

Dirty Sanchez is a stunt show on MTV and Channel 4

The BBC's head of TV news has attacked the quality of multi-channel TV, saying it shows a "poisonous" cocktail of smut.

In a lecture to be given Thursday, Roger Mosey describes the advent of digital TV as a "disappointment".

"The brilliance of the technology of the digital age is not matched by the content which it spreads," he will say.

His comments have already been branded as a "smokescreen" by commercial rivals ITV, who say it aims to shift attention from the debate about the licence fee.

Mr Mosey will give his lecture on "purposes and principles in public broadcasting" at St Andrews University's centre of ethics in Fife.

'Zap'

His comments are contained in a draft version of the speech.

"If you zap around even the more generalist channels on the Sky platform at a certain time of night, some common themes emerge," Mr Mosey is expected to say.

This is an old- fashioned and patronising attitude about the way people engage with television ITV spokesman

He will add: "Sin Cities and Temptation Islands jostle with The Villa Uncut, and a whole channel - Men and Motors - which besmirches the Granada name."

The BBC executive blames "middle class producers and commissioners who use less-educated and less-sophisticated 'real people'... to make bad television programmes in the hope of getting ratings".

Mr Mosey will admit the BBC is guilty of some of this behaviour also but will describe the BBC as a "flood defence" against this type of TV from becoming the norm.

A spokesman for ITV told the Guardian newspaper that Mr Mosey's comments were "old fashioned paternalism".

"The idea that people who are not in the urban media class need protection is an old- fashioned and patronising attitude about the way people engage with television," the spokesman said.